


seek the cypress shade

by carboncopies, sophiegaladheon



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Genderfluid Character, Missing Scene, Pining, Podfic, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Length: 10-20 Minutes, Regency, She/Her Pronouns for Crowley (Good Omens), but the yearning is definitely there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-09-30 22:09:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20454323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carboncopies/pseuds/carboncopies, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiegaladheon/pseuds/sophiegaladheon
Summary: Crowley slides into the room like a battleship into a friendly harbor.  All grace and beauty concealing considerable threat.  The music stops as she walks into the room, people step back, conversations halt.  Aziraphale can’t suppress a smile.  Crowley is Crowley, and she does love to make an entrance.





	seek the cypress shade

**Author's Note:**

> A Party Favor for the 2019 Pod_Together challenge.
> 
> Story by sophiegaladheon  
Podficced by carboncopies
> 
> Title from "Six Songs of Love, Constancy, Romance, Inconstancy, Truth, and Marriage" by Letitia Elizabeth Landon.

  
_cover art by [carboncopies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carboncopies/profile)_

**Listen**  
  
_(or click [here](http://pod-together.parakaproductions.com/2019/seek%20the%20cypress%20shade.mp3) for mobile streaming)_

**Author:** [sophiegaladheon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiegaladheon/profile)

**Reader:** [carboncopies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carboncopies/profile)

**Length:** 10:44

**Downloads:** [mp3](http://pod-together.parakaproductions.com/2019/seek%20the%20cypress%20shade.mp3)  
_(right click to save-as)_

* * *

It isn’t as though Aziraphale hates parties. He loves all things, as is his nature, and parties, in general, are filled with the sort of things that he usually enthusiastically enjoys about living on Earth. And this party, too, has food and wine and happy people, all of which should be enough to guarantee at least a pleasant evening for the angel.

But there is also dancing (which he does not do), and people trying to get him to sell them books, and people making cutting remarks about _trade_ every time someone mentions his shop, and all in all he would like very much to be somewhere else with a nice cup of cocoa and something to read. Perhaps that new novel _Frankenstein_, he has just managed to get his hands on a set and it is waiting for him enticingly at his shop.

Yes, that sounds much nicer than bumbling around the London townhouse of a man thoroughly lacking in good taste, fruitlessly trying to get a good word in with his host that maybe publishing some more morally instructive texts would be just the ticket don’t you think?

Aziraphale knows that morally instructive texts are definitely not just the ticket, and his host, a publisher who might have more money than sense but who still has quite a lot of both, knows it too. That doesn’t mean heaven knows or cares, though. And what the Archangel Gabriel wants the Archangel Gabriel gets.

Aziraphale sighs and thinks pleasant thoughts. Not even the buffet has been enough to salvage the evening, stodgy and overwrought as it is. And young ladies keep asking him to dance! He suspects they must have a game of it, to bother him so in the face of so many refusals and general impropriety.

There’s something of a commotion at the door, a flurry of barely-hushed whispers spreading through the room as a new group of guests arrives. Aziraphale’s gaze catches on a familiar silhouette, head-and-shoulders taller than the gaggle of surrounding young ladies.

Crowley slides into the room like a battleship into a friendly harbor, like a swan gliding between boaters on an undisturbed lake. All grace and beauty concealing considerable threat. Her dress is in the modern fashion—low neckline, high waist—and, of course, jet black. Her long auburn curls are piled high atop her head and fixed with a comb; a pair of tiny round smoked glass spectacles perch atop her nose.

The music stops as the newcomers walk into the room, people step back, conversations halt. Aziraphale can’t suppress a smile. Crowley is Crowley, and she does love to make an entrance.

Crowley leans over and says something to the young woman next to her. The girl laughs, and all the sudden the spell is broken; the music restarts, the dancers resume, the gossip picks up with increased vigor.

Aziraphale keeps his eyes on Crowley. He can see now that she is with a party of two other women and a young man, all clearly related. Crowley looks up and their eyes meet, Crowley’s glasses doing very little to hide her eyes from Aziraphale’s gaze. She says something to one of her companions, not breaking eye contact, and then Crowley is winding her way across the room towards him.

Aziraphale stays where he is, fiddling nervously with his glass of disappointing claret as Crowley approaches. As she gets closer, he can see the details of Crowley’s dress, the sparkle of the jet beads at her throat and ears, the barest suggestion of rouge on her lips.

She’s standing in front of him now and Aziraphale really ought to say something before the whole room notices and thinks him the idiot he’s so often accused of being.

“Hello, Crowley,” he says, a tad higher pitched than normal but thankfully mostly coherent.

“Hello, angel.” Crowley’s smile is sharp but her eyes are fond. Probably fonder than they really ought to be, or at least fonder than Aziraphale wishes they were in all but the deepest, darkest, most carefully guarded corners of his heart. “Congratulations on the bookshop, I never did get to say.”

“Oh, I, ah, thank you.” Aziraphale takes a sip of his substandard claret and clears his throat. “And what does Hell want with the good publisher?” It might be the coward’s way out, retreating from the personal to business, but isn’t as though he hasn’t been called a coward before, and by far worse figures than his own mind.

Crowley shifts to stand next to him against the wall, facing out at the crowd of partygoers. There’s something, some flicker of disappointment on her face that says she knows what Aziraphale is doing, but she lets it pass. “What good publisher, the man’s driven more by profit than a horse is by the coachman’s whip. His soul is for hell with no help from me.”

Aziraphale demurs. He can’t deny it.

“I’m encouraging the man to publish more novels,” Crowley says, answering the original question.

Aziraphale raises an eyebrow. “Really? That doesn’t seem particularly . . . evil.”

Crowley shrugs one elegant shoulder, drawing Aziraphale’s attention to the contrast between the smooth skin and shiny black silk. He forces his eyes back towards the crowds milling about the room.

“That’s not what some people are saying.”

“Those people are idiots.” Aziraphale has very firm opinions about people who think novels causing moral decline. His opinion is that those people are idiots.

Crowley chuckles. “Come on, angel. You know it isn’t about what we think. It’s about what they think.” She gestures at the mass of people in front of them. “And books are agents of change, always have been. You should know that.” She raises an eyebrow at Aziraphale and he gives her a conciliatory nod. “Free will and all that. All we can do is throw opportunities at them and see how they react.”

Crowley shifts so that she’s facing Aziraphale. “So that’s me. But what’s Heaven have you doing in the house of our morally degenerate publishing friend? Or is this something of your own initiative?”

Aziraphale clears his throat, staring intently at the party scene in front of him. “Heaven is interested in seeing the production of more morally uplifting literature,” he says as neutrally as he can, and takes another drink. It really is terrible claret; he doesn’t know why he bothers.

Crowley lets out a disbelieving laugh. “Of course, you are. Morally uplifting literature. Oh, Satan, that’s a good one. I bet you enjoyed _Pamela_.”

As a matter of fact, Aziraphale had enjoyed _Pamela_. It was, however, one of the works Gabriel had cited when he was explaining what he wanted to see more of, which made Aziraphale question whether the Archangel had ever actually read it, or any book for that matter.

“Well, as you say. Free will. Opportunities for choice and all that.”

“Of course, angel, have to give them the choice to read your horribly long and melodramatic morally prescriptivist books or to not do that.”

Crowley is smiling at him again, her eyes bright and twinkling behind her glasses. “Care to dance, angel?”

Aziraphale glances at Crowley reprovingly. “You know I don’t dance.” He finishes the last of his drink. “This really is a terrible claret, surely a house this nice must have something better in the cellars than that.” He frowns at his empty glass as though it has personally disappointed him.

Crowley laughs. “Let’s find something better, then, angel. And maybe if we’re lucky they’ll have brought out the syllabub.”

Aziraphale perks up at the mention of dessert. “Your friends won’t mind my monopolizing you for the evening?” he asks, nodding at the party Crowley entered with.

“They’ll be grateful for the reprieve, I should think,” Crowley says.

Aziraphale doesn’t believe her. After all, there’s no one else he would rather spend the evening with. But he’s always been too selfish for his own good, and if Crowley is going to offer him an excuse to take what he wants, well. He’s going to let her.

Aziraphale sets down his empty glass and he offers his arm to Crowley. If he lets himself enjoy the quiet luxury of the slide of her soft silk gloves against his wool coat sleeve and the press of Crowley’s arm against his own, well. There’s no one to know but himself.

They set off, winding their way across the room arm in arm towards the buffet table, in search of sweets and a quality bottle of wine that will have miraculously appeared by the time they arrive.


End file.
